Using my Cricut to turn my digital doodles into stickers.
I've made die cut stickers before, but I wanted to try the kiss cut technique with my Cricut machine. I thought the technique was easy to do, but I had to convert my hand drawn doodles into digital drawings first. I thought I'd share my experience with you.
Digital Doodles
I had a few Halloween-themed doodles in my sketchbook that I wanted to turn into stickers. I thought about re-sketching them, coloring them with alcohol ink markers, and then scanning the colored doodles into my laptop.
However, I decided to re-create the doodles digitally. I thought this would be a good opportunity to practice my novice digital drawing and Adobe Photoshop skills.
Instead of scanning, I opted to take photos with my phone and uploaded them onto my laptop. I saved each doodle as a separate image file which I opened in Photoshop. I lowered the opacity of the image file, created a new layer, and traced over the original image.
I've drawn digitally before for fun, but not as often as I should. I still have much to learn and make many mistakes. I used the undo feature and eraser tool frequently as I re-created my doodles as digital drawings.
I drew the images with a transparent background on a letter-sized canvas. I created and saved the images in individual PSD (Photoshop) and PNG files. I set my brush size to 25 for drawing the black and white outlines. The outer white outlines were my attempt to create a bleed around the image prior to having it cut out with my Cricut machine.
I later realized I either should've used a larger brush size for drawing the white outlines or waited to draw the white outlines after I arranged all images into a single PSD and PNG file.
I arranged my favorite images onto a couple Photoshop canvas sized 4" x 6" with a transparent background. I arranged my doodled monsters on one canvas and different colored witch's hats on another canvas. The witch's hats were sized so they'd fit on the monsters' heads if I wanted to place them that way.
I saved both Photoshop canvases of arranges images as PSD and PNG files. I wasn't sure if this was necessary to do, but it's what I've seen others do in their kiss cut sticker tutorials online.
Perhaps they did it because they created their sticker sheets with additional designs for selling in their online shops. I figured it was a good practice for my first kiss cut technique attempt. I could always try something different next time.
Old Laptop as a Drawing Tablet
I used my old 2015 Surface Book laptop and tablet combo as my digital drawing tablet. I have a newer laptop with a touch screen and better latency, except it doesn't offer me the flexibility to lay the screen flat on a tabletop surface or at a low, comfortable angle for me to draw on.
Using this older laptop presented challenges. The latency, or input lag, is high. This may be because I'm using a Bamboo stylus opposed to the original Surface Pen, but I lost the original pen at a conference I attended years ago.
Few touch gestures worked on my old laptop. I was able to use my fingers to pan and zoom, rotate the canvas, and select tools and menu options. However, I've never been able to get other touch gestures to work. For example, swiping three fingers towards the left doesn't undo the way Adobe says touch capabilities and customizable workspaces should. I always had to access the edit menu to undo, especially when I drew a line crooked.
The only way I could achieve straight lines was to draw fast, except I don't like to draw fast. In order to keep from drawing shaky lines while drawing at a speed I'm comfortable with, I had to increase the brush's smoothing to 100%. Doing so made my drawing process longer than it should because increased smoothing resulted in an increased lag in latency.
My old laptop overheated within an hour's time. Photoshop ran slower the hotter my old laptop got. After about an hour, if I didn't shut off the laptop, the laptop would shut off on its own.
I pushed through and continued re-creating my doodles digitally using my old laptop, but I think it's time to retire my 2015 Surface Book.
Cricut Design Space
I uploaded the files with the arranged images into Cricut Design Space. Even though I arranged the various images onto a single Photoshop canvas sized 4" x 6", it uploaded onto Cricut Design Space as larger image sizes. I resized the files to 4" in width.
I realized through trial-and-error that I needed to attach both image files so they would print on one sheet. I wanted to use my Cricut Explore Printable Vinyl for inkjet printers. I didn't see the point of wasting several sheets to print just a few stickers.
I loaded a sheet of the printable vinyl into my printer. I followed the onscreen steps to send the "Print Then Cut" files to my printer. I turned off the "Add Bleed" and "Show System Dialog" before confirming the print.
Printer Troubles
My Epson Artisan 730 has never failed me. However, it never printed good quality images when I printed through the Cricut Design Space. I noticed this problem when I was Decorating My Cricut Maker and Making a Jar Label for Fun. At the time, I thought there was some sort of miscommunication between the Cricut Design Space program and my printer.
Sure enough, my sheet printed with lots of ink bleeding, streaks running through the images, and colors that didn't match what I saw onscreen. I went through the printer maintenance steps to troubleshoot the issue. When it didn't work after a second attempt at printing through the Cricut Design Space, I printed the same image directly through Photoshop. The print came out flawlessly.
I attempted to change the printer settings and preferences on my old laptop without success. I then attempted to update the driver software. At that point, my old laptop dropped the printer. For some reason, I couldn't connect the printer with a wireless or wired connection.
My Dad, who worked as IT help desk and tech support after retiring from the Air Force, spent hours trying to connect the printer to the old laptop. For some reason, he also couldn't connect the two with a wireless or wired connection.
He gave up and figured the 2015 Surface Book should be retired as my drawing tablet of sorts.
On my newer laptop, I turned on "Show System Dialog" to ensure that the print quality and material was correct before printing. Most YouTubers I've watched usually keep this feature turned off before printing.
If you encounter print issues, I'd recommend turning on "Show System Dialog" to verify that your print settings and preferences are correct.
Kiss Cut Stickers
I placed the printed vinyl sheet onto a LightGrip mat, making sure the edges of the sheet lined up within the top-left corner of the mat. The sheet didn't stick to the mat very well because of its heavier weight, so I used a few pieces of painter's tape to keep the top edges from rising or curling.
In Cricut Design Space, I selected "Washi Tape" as the material. I read online that "Washi Tape" and "Sticky Note" work best for the kiss cut technique when working with Cricut sticker paper or vinyl sheets.
Sure enough, the "Washi Tape" material option worked as expected. The images peeled off the vinyl sheet with ease.
Because the white outlines I drew for each individual image was thin, my Cricut machine either cut close to or through a part of the images. That's user error with how I created the images, not a fault of the machine.
I printed another sheet of just the doodled monsters, this time with "Add Bleed" and "Show System Dialog" turned on. I went through the process of printing the vinyl sheet, placing the sheet onto the LightGrip mat, and feeding the mat through my Cricut machine to do the kiss cut technique after selecting the "Washi Tape" material option.
Sure enough, the print and cut were a success.
My Thoughts
The kiss cut technique with the Cricut machine was easy. The challenges I encountered were either user error, like the thin white outlines around the images, or a technical issue with my old 2015 Surface Book.
The thing that made me most excited about the success of the kiss cut technique was turning my own original doodles into stickers, not necessarily the success of the technique itself.
I'm still in awe to see my doodles as stickers stuck onto random things around the house. My doodles aren't the greatest, but they're all my own designs! Creating kiss cut sticker sheets out of my doodles just made the process feel more rewarding.
What's Next?
I've been celebrating Halloween all month through craft projects. Check back to see a couple more greeting cards and a new product review.
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Thanks, and have a great day!
Simply Jelly Jam